The 20 Hottest AI Cloud Companies: The 2026 CRN AI 100
As part of CRN’s 2026 AI 100, here are the 20 hottest AI cloud companies that every channel partner and business need to know about this year.
The 20 cloud companies named to CRN’s AI 100 list are paving the AI infrastructure highway and agentic innovation road map of the future.
These 20 cloud and AI visionaries are at the top of the pyramid in terms of global AI market share and mind share, including tech giants Amazon Web Services, Broadcom, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce.
In addition, fast-growing AI cloud companies including CoreWeave, Cirrascale, Expedient, H2O.ai, Lambda and ScaleOps—as well as standouts like Snowflake, MongoDB and Nerdio—are on CRN’s AI 100 list this year.
From cloud GPU and infrastructure providers to agentic AI and AI cost management innovators, these 20 companies are helping millions of customers drive adoption and AI production at scale. They are not only selling AI products, but providing a path for customers to become AI-enabled.
John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said generative AI “has simply put the cloud market into overdrive,” with AI-specific services and AI innovation accounting for much of the cloud growth over the past several years.
Worldwide cloud infrastructure service revenue reached $119 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a $29 billion increase compared with the fourth quarter of 2024.
“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that AI has driven these changes—ChatGPT was launched in late 2022 and started to meaningfully impact the market in the latter part of 2023,” Dinsdale told CRN earlier this year. “Since then, the cloud market leaders have seen their revenue growth rates accelerate and a wide range of neocloud companies have launched, adding impetus to already positive market dynamics.”
Here are the 20 hottest AI cloud companies that every channel partner and business need to know about in 2026.
Amazon Web Services
Matt Garman
CEO
The world’s leading $142 billion cloud company offers a slew of infrastructure, platform services and cloud applications for the AI era. Amazon Bedrock gives customers access to both AWS and partner AI models, while the Seattle-based company’s AgentCore platform lets customers build and deploy production-ready AI agents.
Broadcom
Hock Tan
CEO
The $77 billion infrastructure and cloud giant is driving its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud platform into the enterprise as much as possible. VCF 9 is Palo Alto, Calif.-based Broadcom’s flagship cloud platform that unifies compute, storage, memory tiering, networking virtualization, automation, security and life-cycle management for containers, virtual machines and AI applications.
Cirrascale Cloud Services
David Driggers
CEO, CTO
Cirrascale Cloud Services delivers cloud and managed services providing compute resources and high-speed storage solutions at scale. The San Diego-based company’s AI Innovation Cloud and Inference Platform services are purpose-built to let customers scale their training, fine-tuning and inferencing workloads for Private AI, generative AI, LLMs and high-performance computing.
Cloudera
Charles Sansbury
CEO
Cloudera delivers a consistent cloud experience that converges public clouds, on-premises data centers and the edge, leveraging an open-source foundation. As a pioneer in big data offerings, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company seeks to empower customers to apply AI and assert control over 100 percent of their data—in all forms—improving security, governance and predictive insight.
CoreWeave
Michael Intrator
CEO
Dubbing itself as the essential cloud for the AI era, CoreWeave delivers a platform of products, tools and teams that enables customers to transform quickly while building and scaling AI environments. Unlike general-purpose cloud providers, Livingston, N.J.-based CoreWeave focuses on high-performance GPU cloud infrastructure optimized for training, fine-tuning and serving complex AI models.
Expedient
Bryan Smith
CEO
From providing hybrid cloud infrastructure and disaster recovery in its AI CTRL Platform—Pittsburgh-based Expedient delivers a universal cloud operating model that bridges the gap between legacy IT and modern innovation. Expedient acts as an extension of its customers’ teams, offering architectural guidance and operational excellence to transform businesses.
Google Cloud
Thomas Kurian
CEO
Google Cloud is pouring tens of billions of dollars into building AI data centers, creating AI hardware and new agentic AI innovation. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s Vertex AI platform is for AI life-cycle development and management, while its AI Model Garden has over 100 model options. Google AI tools include everything from BigQuery ML and Document AI to specialized APIs for AI.
H20.ai
Sri Ambati
CEO
One of the world’s top agentic AI innovators, H2O.ai converges generative and predictive AI to help enterprises and public sector agencies build secure, purpose-built GenAI applications on their private data. With over 20,000 customers, H2O.ai powers AI transformation alongside partners including Nvidia, Dell Technologies and AWS. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised $256 million in funding thus far.
HashiCorp
Armon Dadgar
Co-Founder, CTO
Life-cycle management all-star HashiCorp offers tools to automate the provisioning, security and management of cloud infrastructure. HashiCorp specializes in helping organizations transition from manual IT processes to automated workflows in multi-cloud and hybrid environments. The San Francisco-based company was acquired by IBM in February 2025 for $6.4 billion.
IBM
Arvind Krishna
Chairman, CEO
IBM is a global provider of hybrid cloud, AI and consulting services with customers in over 175 counties. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company delivers open and flexible options, including its Red Hat OpenShift platform, to give customers insight into their data and streamline business processes. In March, IBM completed its acquisition of data streaming platform provider Confluent to boost AI models, agents and automated workflow technologies.
Lambda
Stephen Balaban
CEO
Lambda is a fast-growing AI cloud infrastructure provider that focuses on building supercomputers for AI training and inference. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give its tens of thousands of customers the power of superintelligence. In late 2025, Lambda raised over $1.5 billion in a single funding round.
Microsoft
Satya Nadella
Chairman, CEO
Microsoft is the world’s second largest cloud provider with a $324 billion annual run rate and an ever-growing AI portfolio. The Redmond, Wash.-based cloud giant has launched a slew of AI innovation including Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365, Microsoft Fabric and Agent HQ—providing a deep AI product portfolio.
MongoDB
Chirantan Desai
CEO
MongoDB provides an AI-driven data platform via its Altas cloud database that is rapidly growing as AI application development booms. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics and AI-powered data retrieval, the New York-based company helps customers innovate efficiently and simplify architectures. Millions of developers and over 60,000 customers rely on MongoDB for their critical and AI applications.
Nerdio
Vadim Vladimirskiy
CEO
Trusted by enterprises and MSPs alike, Nerdio equips customers of all sizes with cost-effective cloud management tools for Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and Microsoft 365 solutions. The Chicago-based company has integrated AI solutions into its management platforms to drive automation and optimization for Microsoft offering via its Nerdio Manager.
Oracle
Clay Magouyrk, Mike Sicilia
Co-CEOs
Oracle’s cloud AI portfolio includes infrastructure for training models as well as embedded AI features inside its SaaS applications. The Austin, Texas-based company’s vast offerings include AI-powered databases, AI tools for building applications, AI features in Java, platforms for creating conversational AI chatbots, and its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that powers enterprise AI companies.
Red Hat
Matt Hicks
CEO
Red Hat’s AI cloud portfolio bridges the gap between AI experimentation and production deployment across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a focus on open-source flexibility and reducing the costs of large-scale AI solutions. The Raleigh, N.C.-based company’s core AI platforms include Red Hat OpenShift AI, AI Enterprise and Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux AI.
Salesforce
Marc Benioff
CEO
From Agentforce 360 to specialized AI agent suite offerings, Salesforce is a market leader in data AI management and cloud CRM. The San Francisco-based company integrates generative and agentic AI technology directly into its CRM platform to power autonomous AI agents, analyze data and automate tasks. In late 2025, Salesforce bought data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
ScaleOps
Yodar Shafrir
CEO
ScaleOps is an automated AI infrastructure management specialist focusing on GPU optimization for customers running AI models. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company’s platform tackles the high costs and complexity of managing large-scale AI workloads by automating resource allocation in real time. The new ScaleOps AI Infra Product resource management offering is for self-hosted GenAI models and GPU-based applications in cloud-native environments.
Snowflake
Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO
More than 13,300 customers use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud platform to build, use and share data, applications and AI. The Bozeman, Mont.-based company’s cloud portfolio of AI products enables users to use AI on trusted, governed data so organizations can embrace agentic AI innovation where Snowflake’s intelligence drives data-driven actions across the business.
Spectro Cloud
Tenry Fu
CEO
With its Palette and PaletteAI platforms, Spectro Cloud aim to solve how enterprises and the public sector manage full-stack application and AI infrastructure in any environment—from edge to cloud, and from hardware to AI models. The San Jose, Calif.-based company automates the full life cycle of complex infrastructure at scale for cost savings and better business outcomes.